The Netflix Streaming Endorsement: Lockout, the Modern Action Noir

Despite a superficial narrative resemblance to Escape from New York and Escape from L.A. — you know, grizzled, wisecracking convict is promised freedom if he can charge into enemy territory to rescue the president's daughter — Lockout's roots run deeper. The movie is really more interested in channeling Raymond Chandler than in the postmodern action heroes his sensibility inspired, which is why this is in many ways the closest thing our cinema has to a truly contemporary film noir. Whether this whole shtick falls within your wheelhouse should be apparent (or not) within literally thirty seconds: Snow (Guy Pearce) is punched out of frame in closeup, cigarette in mouth, and when he swings back in, the cig's cartoonishly askew — a sight gag worthy of Frank Tashlin, if not quite Jacques Tati. And Pearce, by the way, is a modest revelation here: He nails the grizzled wiseguy like it was the role he was born to play (think Humphrey Bogart circa In a Lonely Place only with biceps the size of trees). The film trips over itself a bit through the last act, when a well-calibrated cat-and-mouse game devolves into the requisite bloodbath, but Pearce is always there to leaven the proceedings even when the script has him flying somewhat off the rails. Tonally, at least, it doesn't get much better than this — and for that reason alone it is infinitely preferable to the self-serious mugging of whatever the Batman is up to these days.

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